A CO2 Emissions Life Cycle Assessment of Additive and Conventional Manufacturing Based Lightweight Design in the Automotive

Within the road to decarbonization scenario, it becomes increasingly central to analyze the sources of emissions from different perspectives and select the more sustainable design approach for the development of new products. Among many sectors, lightweighting can reduce costs related to energy and fuel consumption. Potentially, it is also possible to reduce emissions, both for air and land transport, especially considering vehicles in the context of electrification and green transition. This paper provides an approach for the quantitative estimation of CO2 emissions along the lightweight design of vehicles components. The approach is based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which includes aspects ranging from product design and production to the use phase, and possible upgrading and recycling. Two lightweight design strategies are considered, using either conventional or unconventional technologies, which are respectively based on Design for Machining and Design for Additive Manufacturing. These methods can be scaled in high-end sectors, as both are characterized by high flexibility and customization, which allow the implementation of lightweight designs for small batch sizes. An automotive component is used as a case study, performing the product-process design based on Computer-Aided Technologies (CAX) for both approaches. The CO2 assessment is performed, considering all the drivers relating to the stages of the product life cycle. Additive Manufacturing is confirmed as more energy intensive, but the additional mass saving over the vehicle use phase returns emissions reduction compared to the whole life cycle.